* Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar has said "penalty points have been hugely successful" and "the new Road Traffic Bill will make a big difference to safety on the roads".

An examination of this success shows that since the Road Safety Authority (RSA) was established in 2006, 30pc of deaths were of people aged under 24, a million speeding penalty points were issued, and 1,971 road users died.

In 2009, An Garda Siochana set up a hi-tech unit to discover the cause of accidents and a special Government task force was also set up in response to rising road deaths in 2013.

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